Valentine Michaud, born in 1993, is a French saxophonist who has been living in Switzerland since 2010. Her repertoire includes contemporary works as well as transcriptions of baroque or classical music and improvised performances. One of the greatest concerns of this enthusiastic and curious artist with a diverse background is to make her instrument known to a wider audience, to strengthen the still too little used repertoire of the saxophone and to perform new works in unprecedented formats.
Valentine has won several awards at international competitions: In 2020, she won the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award and was given the opportunity to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel at the Lucerne Summer Festival. She won further prizes at the Jurjans Andrejs IV Woodwind International Competition in Riga and at Crédit Suisse Jeunes Solistes. Her duo Akmi, which she founded with the pianist Akvile Sileikaite, has also won several awards.
Valentine Michaud is convinced of the synergies that arise from collaborations with other art forms and is constantly looking for ways to develop new concert formats. Thus she created WAITING FOR AMON, a trilogy of transdisciplinary performances. GLITCH, the first, a piece for a painter, two dancers, two saxophonists and live electronics, was premiered in June 2016 at the Theater der Künste in Zurich.
She has performed regularly as a soloist, chamber musician or with orchestras in renowned concert halls: KKL Lucerne, Wigmore Hall, Issue Project Room (New York); Hradec Kralové Philharmonic, Vienna Konzerthaus, Philharmonie Hall (Odessa), Tonhalle Zurich ... She was invited as a soloist by orchestras such as the Vienna Philarmonic, State Cappella Symphony Orchestra St Petersburg, Latvian National Symphnoy Orchestra or Junge Zürcher Harmoniker.
After saxophone lessons in the tradition of the French school (in the class of Joël Hérissé), Valentine moved to Switzerland at the age of 16 to study with Pierre-Stéphane Meugé at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, where she became interested in contemporary repertoire and early music (Baroque, Renaissance). In 2013, she completed a Bachelor's degree in saxophone and a Bachelor's degree in musicology from the Université de la Sorbonne in Paris. After a first Master's degree in instrumental pedagogy, she continued her education from 2015 to 2018 with a second Master's degree – this time specialising in soloist – in the class of Lars Mlekusch at the Hochschule der Künste in Zurich.